Older people just think of themselves as wearing out because they have been around for a while, but always citizens in every sense. But ageism abounds, and the rest of us are “ taught” to fear being old and to admire youth, newness, productivity and beauty. So older people are increasingly excluded or “put out to pasture” from the time of voluntary or forced retirement. In this state it’s easy for the rest of us to imagine they need less and can offer us less.

Aged care has evolved over a long time to respond to frail people who look like this. So it does provide reliable care that the rest of us no longer want to do. But the price is high, and frail older people find themselves giving up everything that they hold dear to get this care.

The rest of us watch on, resigned to this being how you “do” being frail, still very fond of our elders , but otherwise displaced by the aged care machinery. Occasionally individuals, groups, entities and even governments see all this for what it is and seek to change it. But aged care has proven to date to be an impenetrable fortress.

These papers seek to tell the story free of the empire’s messaging, ageism and the place this has taken us to, embracing a desire to understand and maximise this beautiful, emerging frail life stage, and start to shape what an aged care that maximises frail lives might look like.